


Can I get you some ice cream?

by lilllac



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Annabeth and Luke are family, F/F, F/M, First Meetings, Fluff, Meet-Cute, Percy and Rachel are best friends, Percy just really wants to survive college, Romance, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:41:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22855648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilllac/pseuds/lilllac
Summary: “You ran me over with a bicycle and knocked off the spreadsheets I had been working on for months in a gigantic puddle of mud, but then you were embarrassed and literally went over there and dipped your arm in to get them back and, strangely, I thought that was the cutest thing ever ".In a series of accidental and embarrassing events, Percy Jackson achieves a fractured nose, passes the most difficult chemistry test of his life, and gets a girlfriend. Not necessarily in that order.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Luke Castellan & Annabeth Chase, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Rachel Elizabeth Dare & Percy Jackson, Rachel Elizabeth Dare/Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano
Comments: 1
Kudos: 43





	1. The third best option.

**Author's Note:**

> Percy tries really, really hard.   
> English is not my first language, so all mistakes are my own. I hope it's still an ejoyable reading.

Percy frowned at the sound of something metallic landing beside his head on the coffee table. He didn't want to open his eyes, but he did it anyway.

"You need to eat something," Hazel was succinct.

The boy looked away. When he first met Hazel at the beginning of university, he had a hard time believing that she really was a college student - the girl still looked very much like a kid, after all - and for endless months he teased her and treated her like a child. Until he accompanied Frank to one of her jiu-jitsu championships and saw her basically dragging her opponents to the ground. Percy now, very wisely, knew that Hazel Levesque was someone to be taken seriously.

He lifted his torso, wrapped a hand around the juice can and opened it. The liquid bubbled down his throat and only then did he notice how dry his mouth was.

"And eat, too," Frank commented, from where he was sitting in an armchair.

"How long has he been like this?" Hazel looked up at the other boy in the room:

"I don't know," Grover shrugged, but he sounded genuinely concerned. "I spent a few days at Juníper's house and when I came back he just talked about chemistry, and failing".

Percy grunted. Just the mention of those two words in the same sentence gave him headaches. When he was finally accepted into the Biology, he had imagined that he had finally left calculus - or at least, a large part of it - in high school, only to pass his term and be bombarded with biochemistry. He would have a test next month and was unable to understand absolutely any of the countless formulas in his books.

He had asked for help from Jason, who, being Jason, accepted at first with zero hesitation. But when Percy arrived at his cousin's apartment, he found the generally clean and organized home thrown upside down: he and Thalia were working on a new project, which brought together physics students from different semesters. The siblings were sure it would work: they just needed to find a way to make the thing stop electrifying people.

Percy realized that it would be unfair to ask Jason to help him when the boy was so busy already. Leo had taken a look at Percy's notes and said that the only chemistry he understood was the one that removed rust from his tools. Desolate, dejected and feeling as if his academic career was indeed over, Percy looked for his last option, which was to try to learn everything by himself.

So far, it hadn't been working very well. Grover had returned from his visit to his girlfriend's house and found him surrounded by books, jars of ice cream, packets of snacks and a horrendous amount of canned food. The boy knew he couldn't call Sally - Percy was very, very insistent about not making his mother worry, especially after starting to live alone - so he called the second-best option: Hazel.

The girl had arrived a few moments ago, accompanied by her brother - who had given her a ride - and her boyfriend, Frank. Percy was just happy that Will, Nico's boyfriend, was not there: he didn't need a medical student to warn him about the risks of canned food and dehydration.

"You're really stupid," Nico commented.

"Wow, thank you very much, captain obvious." Percy rolled his eyes. "Forgive me if I am unable to understand a subject for the test".

"That's not what I meant" the other boy nudged him with the pointy end of his sneaker.

"What then?".

"There are other people at our university besides your group of friends. You can ask Reyna for help,” he suggested.

"Reyna?" Percy repeated. "Your super-smart classmate?". 

He knew the girl, or, at least, had heard about her. She was one of the best students at the university and was always invited to congresses and all kinds of things. Despite having an obvious ... something with Rachel, Percy's best friend, he had never had a chance to really get to know her better. Whatever they had, it was still recent, and Rachel didn't want to scare the girl, or whatever. Reyna was smart, obviously, but as far as Percy knew, she was a law student, like Nico and his sister.

"And what about it?" Nico raised his eyebrows. "Take it from me, man. Reyna can help you".

On the one hand, it could be just Nico trusting his best friend way too much. On the other hand, he could be right and Reyna could somehow be an artificial intelligence capable of being the best student in her course and somehow still remembering high school subjects. And at the moment, Percy was accepting any kind of aid - robotic or not.

When Hazel, Nico, and Frank left, Grover insisted that Percy should be looking for the girl soon. And so he did. He felt awkward asking Rachel to introduce him to the other girl, but she just agreed in a good-humored way and said she would talk to her.  
The next day, the redhead found him buying a hamburger in the cafeteria. Rachel jumped on him, taking her own feet off the floor and hanging from Percy by the arms around his shoulders.

"What is this about?" Percy asked when she finally broke away.

"You got me a date!" Rachel replied, gesturing excitedly.

Percy blinked, completely lost.

"What?".

"Yesterday, when I texted Reyna asking if she wouldn't like to meet my best friend" Rachel elbowed him "she apparently thought it was a sign that I wanted to make things official and asked me on a date! So, thank you, Aquaman".

"And that made you happy?" Percy was having a hard time believing.

Since meeting Rachel, in elementary school, the girl had kept herself away from serious relationships. She liked to flirt, to kiss and then disappear for a week or two. She seemed to have a complete dislike of the concept of fidelity, and Percy had never thought he would see her happy for being asked on a date. 

They had dated briefly, in the beginning of high school, and, like all their relationships so far, it had gone wrong.

It took him a moment to understand:

"Wow, wow, wow, wait a minute" Percy put his hamburger on a table and shook her by the shoulders. "You really like her!". 

Rachel laughed. She hit him hard on the arm, and then pulled a chair from the same table for them to sit on.

"Anyway," she continued. "Reyna said she is free tomorrow, from 6 to 8 pm. Is it good for you?".

"Well, yes." Percy scratched his head. "Is she a perfectionist? This is a very specific time".

"Kind of." Rachel drummed her fingers on the table. "It's just that she has an internship at her mother's company, and then, gym. But don't worry, she is a great teacher!".

Percy took a generous bite of his lunch. The way his studies by himself were going, Reyna would need to be the greatest genius of that generation to make him understand anything.

On the appointed day and time, Percy pedaled to the meeting place: an open-air kiosk, close to some stores in a shopping center. He pedaled slowly, without haste, when he felt his cell phone vibrate in his pants pocket. Absently, he unlocked it:

**Rach D(olt):** _We're leaving the house now. Are you already on the way?_

Percy pulled on the brake so he could type in an answer, but by the time he realized it, it was too late.

A mixed exclamation between surprise and pain, a sudden stop, a ream of papers thrown in the air ...

And two sore persons lying under a bicycle in a muddy puddle.

_Gods_ , and Percy thought the chemistry test was his biggest problem ...


	2. Beautiful first impressions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, everyone who left kudos!   
> Also, this is supposed to be just a big fluffly story, so don't expect any angst. With that said, hope you enjoy the chapter.

Percy sometimes did stupid things. Like that time when he traveled to Canada with Frank and stuck his tongue on a metal doorknob, or when he bet with Leo that he could put more marshmallows in his mouth than he or - oh, gods - or that incredibly stupid time he challenged Thalia in an arm-wrestling contest.

But, deep down, they were all well-intentioned and good-hearted actions. He was never trying to hurt someone or doing dangerous things on purpose.

Percy doubted that the girl would be willing to understand that.

A group of pedestrians had helped them lift the bicycle off their injured bodies, and Percy now found himself in the limelight of unknown people, which was nothing like he had imagined that afternoon tp play out. He accepted the hand that a gray-haired man held out, and when he turned to try to help the girl, saw that she was already on her feet. The denim shorts she wore were completely covered in mud, as was the gray T-shirt. Outstanding tousled hair and unfriendly expression. Percy opened his mouth to apologize, but her stormy gray eyes flew down and she said in a hard voice:

"Back off". 

The boy thought it best to obey. He took a few shaky steps back, fearing he would be attacked or something, but all she did was bend over and pick up something from the ground. Looking around, Percy noticed what it was all about: a sheet of A3 papers, completely dirtied and wrinkled. The girl looked across the pages once or twice, before closing her eyes, frowning her pretty face and sighing in exasperation.

"I'm so..." Percy started.

An apparently older boy jostled his way through the crowd and reached them, holding an ice cream cone in each hand. He looked at the scene once - the bicycle discarded on its side and the sheets of paper scattered on the asphalt like fallen tree leaves - and seemed to understand:

"Can you still save any?".

"I don't know, Luke" the girl shook her head "they are all covered in mud. I still have them in PDF format on my notebook, but printing them all over again will cost ... a lot. Not to mention that most of them fell there" she pointed with her thumb at the giant puddle they had fallen into.

Luke frowned. Percy made up his mind: he knelt again, rolled up the right sleeve of his sweatshirt, and stuck his arm in the unpleasant muddy puddle. The mud was cold and soon he felt the bottom of the soil wet and loose.

Honestly, Percy didn't think it was the best of his ideas. The girl also seemed to think the idea was stupid - she ran to his side and pulled his arm back with both hands.

And since nothing in Percy's life ever worked, obviously the tug made him lose his balance and slip. He felt his feet skidding on freshly muddy asphalt and sinking into the puddle as his back hit the ground. To make matters worse, he took the girl with him in a tumble. The mud splashed all over again and those who were enjoying themselves watching the scene hurried away, trying to defend themselves from the chaos.

"This day is going just great," the girl grunted, getting up again.

She wiped the mud off her face and looked at Percy with the most frightening expression he had ever seen. Still, she held out a hand to help him up.

"I'm really sorry," he said.

"It's okay," she replied, and Percy knew it wasn't right. "It's just some college projects".

"Yeah, Annabeth" Luke added, throwing the dirty ice cream in a nearby trash can, with a deeply disappointed expression. "After all, you have only been working on them for months ...".

Percy felt a twinge of guilt. Gods, why did he always do everything wrong? Then he remembered what Annabeth had said about college and looked around desperately for the fallen backpack, and, to his immense unhappiness, discovered that the papers in his binder had also been lost in the confusion.

When he was about to consider cringing and crying thinking about all the sleepless nights taking notes and watching video lessons, a familiar voice distracted him:

"Percy?!".

With much of the crowd already dispersed, he easily recognized his best friend, who was approaching a tall girl with dark skin and black hair in a braid - Reyna.

The girl in question stood still while Rachel laughed at the situation, at the same time trying to wipe the mud off his face with a handkerchief. He saw her, out of the corner of his eye, raising an eyebrow with the greatest confusion he had ever witnessed.

\-----------

Yes. Because all Percy needed was to meet his new teacher while being covered in mud and considerably humiliated.

Reconsidering: all Percy needed was to know that the girl he had dropped in the mud was his new teacher's roommate.

At this point, he couldn't even be surprised anymore.

He and Annabeth waited outside the building while Reyna, Rachel, and Luke went upstairs to get some towels so they wouldn't dirty in hallways. When they finally reached the apartment door, they were told to leave their shoes outside and Reyna instructed him to use the shower in her room. When he got out of the bathroom, Percy found, surprisingly, men's clothes waiting for him on top of her neat bed and wondered who was their owner. 

"They're mine," Luke replied, "I was going to use them at the gym later, but I think you need them more than I do."

Percy was silent. If Reyna was dating Rachel, would Luke and Annabeth be a couple? He thought it to be possible. They really seemed to be on a date that afternoon before he screwed up.

After the story was explained and the introductions were officially made, Reyna asked everyone to go to the dining room. Rachel took some soft drinks from the fridge and distributed them to the group, while the other girl explained:

"Actually, I was the one who asked Annabeth to meet us there too. I had no idea this was going to happen" she took a sip. "But at least now you already know each other, I guess?". 

"Annabeth takes architecture at our college," Rachel explained. "And Reyna thought she could help you better with calculus and, you know, everything math-y".

Percy did not answer, choosing to occupy himself by drinking his soda. He didn't even want to think about the beautiful first impression he had made on Annabeth.

To his surprise, everything was organized very quickly: Reyna was indeed a great teacher, and, even in her somewhat reserved and quiet way, Annabeth was too. Percy couldn't say that they had done miracles - there was a great, great deal of subjects that he still had no idea how to understand - but he thought that with such good teachers he was at least halfway there.

Rachel stayed with Luke on the couch, playing video games and hindering him from time to time, like a good best friend. Percy didn't notice the time passing, but, before he knew it, Reyna was getting up and saying she needed to go to the gym. He, very grudgingly, started to close his notebooks and prepared to leave, but she looked at him with a confused expression:

"Where are you going?".

"I...".

"Annabeth and Luke are going to stay here," she explained. "You can stay longer if you want".

Percy considered the proposal - he could actually use a few more hours of study but ended up refusing. As Hazel had insisted, he needed to eat and rest, and besides, he didn't want to push the bar with Annabeth.

Finally, she ended up being alone in the apartment. Rachel gave Luke and Reyna a ride to the gym and then took Percy home, before leaving for her own.

If asked, Percy would deny until death. But to himself, he couldn't deny that he had spent the entire trip back thinking about the curls of blond hair and those glaring stormy eyes.

Percy wondered how many more problems he would be able to fix himself before that bloody chemistry test.

**Author's Note:**

> Coments are always appreciated. Until next chapter.


End file.
